Data administration generally includes the rights, in a computer environment, to create, change, delete and take other action with regard to information. Particularly, information in form of data objects may be administered by someone, such as a particular system or a specific user, who has the proper privileges. Any object, such as a product object, typically is based on an object model that defines its behavior and the segments it consists of, and this information may be stored as “master data” or equivalent in the system. Objects corresponding to specific products, then, and their respective segments, can be created as instances of the master data and can be used for a variety of purposes. There is a distinction between changing some aspect of the master data, which may be considered a model-level object change, and changing the value of the object or one of its instances, which may be considered an instance-level object change. For example, when a product object has a segment called “product descriptions,” any user action on the descriptions of the product—such as creating, changing or deleting—may be considered a model-level change. Continuing this example, an instance of this segment may be an English language description, and changing or deleting this description may be considered an instance-level change.
Existing solutions may rely on a centralized entity that monitors data ownership among several systems. Any system that seeks to take an action with regard to the object may have to query the monitor before doing so. One disadvantage of such solutions is that communications with the monitor may take some time and may delay other tasks that need to be performed. Moreover, many systems are today coupled in landscape arrangements, where there may not be a common technology between all different systems and therefore no natural “center” that can manage data ownership, which is another term for data administration.
Another existing solution assigns the right to maintain an object to its creator. This functionality is not intended as a data administration feature, but focuses on recording the historical fact of what system (or other entity) initially created the object. Such systems have the disadvantage that the data ownership cannot be changed to a different entity. This can be a problem, particularly in situations where several systems are weakly coupled together in a landscape. If a system is deliberately decoupled from the system, whether temporarily or permanently, the remaining systems may lack data administration rights to the decoupled system's objects.